Christmas Card 2022

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Finis
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Re: Christmas Card 2020.2

Post by Finis »

November 2022 I want to do a version of this project for Christmas 2022. This one is a camera fly through of the scene showing customized parts for each recipient. The full project with characters will proceed slowly with no deadline.
Here is the project WIP: https://blenderartists.org/t/christmas- ... ip/1413802
Artistic, cinema, ideas, creativity advice is welcome and technical Blender advice too. Comment here or at BlenderAritists. Which ever is best for you.
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Re: Christmas Card 2022

Post by Finis »

Almost ready to produce the videos. There will be a generic one plus some customized for each recipient.
stockings.jpg
more here
https://blenderartists.org/t/christmas- ... ip/1413802
Mice die in traps because they don't know why the cheese is free. -- seen on a bumper sticker
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Re: Christmas Card 2022

Post by Finis »

Merry Christmas!

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Re: Christmas Card 2022

Post by bitkar »

wow, this has come a long way... nicely done Finis.
The only thing I would improve is the camera movement, its very "robotic".
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Re: Christmas Card 2022

Post by Steinie »

This was truly magical! Well done!
The Angel and Tree at the end was perfect!
The 5 pieces of chicken credit cracked me up!
I too can play the violin but only in the bathroom... :lol:
Merry Christmas!
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Re: Christmas Card 2022

Post by Finis »

The embed above now shows a director's cut. 1440p, 60fps, plus technical fixes, added flickering fire light, mountains visible through windows. I'll eventually do that for the customized ones too.

Thanks Steinie! You can play violin the bathroom? I can sing in the shower! We'll team up, win on Bathroom has Talent and become superstars!

Thanks Bitkar! The camera movements are precise or smooth. Robotic could describe that. I don't want a handheld wobbling shaky look. My starting goal was to make it nostalgic with movie theater academy flat aspect ratio and traditional cinema camera moves like dolly and track. No film grain though. But I liked a move-while-turning look for the connecting shots which would be difficult with a physical camera. Probably a robot arm used in the real world. Not old fashioned. I welcome your suggestions on how to de-robot the movements.

De-robot: I saw "who's browsing this forum" number was 47. Mostly robots of course ... 67 ... 71 ... how many crawlers are there? ... 93 ... 96
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Re: Christmas Card 2022

Post by trueBlue »

Awesome work! :worship:
Looks like you fixed the shadow movement from the previous version.
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Re: Christmas Card 2022

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I mean, its ofc my opinion (and iam not the author) that it would look more warm and natural with a litle wobbly camera, not like action movie hard shake. But ya, its not necessary.
But as I watched it for the second time - today - I think I know what is disturbing and not calming - its the edit.
As I have also some video editing experience (even professional for some time) I see a problem in mixing really different camera movementes together. Its not really good when it goes left and right, expecially with a hard cut - and thats the other problem - you should maybe use about 2 second transitions to smooth it out (maybe reverse some camera movements to fit the previous more).
You can have hard cuts only when the two shots fit together and there are main focus areas in the same place in the IN and OUT portions of the cut. If you watch a take and then it hard cuts into other where your eyes watch one object on the right side of screen just before the cut, and then the next take has main object at the left, its not good.
PS: I like the music, thats well chosen.
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Re: Christmas Card 2022

Post by Finis »

Thanks!

trueBlue The shadow problem was the most noticeable. Blender's Eevee renderer is fast but not realistic so shadows and reflections are mostly faked and odd things can happen at the edge of images. Here's the wip thread with the many problems encountered https://blenderartists.org/t/christmas- ... ip/1413802.

Good advice Bitkar. I'll use that knowledge in future films. It would take too long to change the left-right movement thing in this one but I might add dissolves for soft transitions.

I'll take a creative break from this project for a while. It really started in 2019 with the goal of a film with CG characters in this setting and I'll return to that sometime. Toys come to life and Jedi Tevu saves Christmas.
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